I believe there were at least two versions. I played with the JLC version for a bit (it was my transition frame from traditional wood to the Max 200G racquet), and I believe the difference between that version and the other (other than the graphics--I think the non-JLC version may have been blue) was that the JLC version had a layer of boron. My guess is that Joe Sch can verify. Nice racquet, very good looking too.

Pro Kennex made a few models similar to the Golden Ace -- in addition to a Golden Ace, I have one called a Blue Ace and another called a Graphite Ace. Really pretty racquets. The Golden Ace differed primarily, I think, because it had boron.

The "Clerc" model has the word Boron on it also. It has a groove around the outside of the racket head too, where the strings sit down into. The earlier version, without Clerc's name does not say "Boron" on it. It also has no groove around the outside. It has several small, hole-to-hole grooves, similar to regular wood rackets.

Hit against the backboard today for a bit with the Golden Ace. Very nice feeling when hit in the sweet spot, even though the strings were probably almost 30 year old syn gut. A lot of the old wood feeling. Very nice feel and fun to hit with. As far as power, when hit in the sweet spot, it was quite powerful. Strung with fresh gut, it would be as powerful as any modern racket. Off the sweet spot, the power dropped off a lot. Sometimes, the no power feeling of a wood racket, but sometimes a metallic-like vibration, which I attribute to the graphite/boron layers transmitting it vs. the wood transmitting/dampening it. Surprisingly didn't get easy spin out of it like I get out of the original Black Ace (graphite) which has a similar head size and string pattern. Often, you think of flexier rackets as being easier to generate spin. Some of it may be due to the very old syn gut strings, but maybe the lack of response outside of the sweet spot has something to do with this.
I can certainly see how a top pro - who is going to center the ball on the stringbed almost every time - could play just about as well with this as any modern racket. Certainly, someone like Clerc could get tons of spin with this. As for me, I think it will be a really good racket to practice with and I should be able to beat a lot of my practice buddies with it. In a league or tournament match, I'll go with the graphite.

After months of not finding anything interesting at my local thrift stores, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a couple of hybrid woodies at two different shops (on the same day) that were actually worth bringing home. Neither would ever win beauty contests, but they still have plenty of fight left in them. Most intriguingly, they appear to be long lost twins!

As I understand it, Cloud is a German brand with virtually no presence here in the US, so a tennis-loving expat must have brought this one to California during his/her travels. Other than having a slightly thicker cross section (made of a 9-10 ply laminate instead of only 7-8 ply), the Cloud "Middy" is dimensionally identical to the PK "Graphite Ace", and feels 100% as wonderful as the latter on the court. I've seen early 'graphite-only' Golden Aces (which were presumably rebadged "Graphite Ace" when PK Marketing decided to give the more prestigious "Golden Ace" moniker to an updated boron model) that also exhibit a 9-10 ply construction detail in the throat area, so this difference may be the product of an effort to reduce manufacturing costs over time, rather than a reflection of divergent design specifications.

Either way, I am now 99.99% certain (with a margin of error of 0.01%) that Kunnan Industries made at least some of the racquets for Cloud. It would also not surprise me if the equally obscure (for the US) Weiss Cannon label, a Cloud spinoff, also had their products made by Kunnan before they quit the racquet business, like so many others of that era.

After months of not finding anything interesting at my local thrift stores, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a couple of hybrid woodies at two different shops (on the same day) that were actually worth bringing home. Neither would ever win beauty contests, but they still have plenty of fight left in them. Most intriguingly, they appear to be long lost twins!

As I understand it, Cloud is a German brand with virtually no presence here in the US, so a tennis-loving expat must have brought this one to California during his/her travels. Other than having a slightly thicker cross section (made of a 9-10 ply laminate instead of only 7-8 ply), the Cloud "Middy" is dimensionally identical to the PK "Graphite Ace", and feels 100% as wonderful as the latter on the court. I've seen early 'graphite-only' Golden Aces (which were presumably rebadged "Graphite Ace" when PK Marketing decided to give the more prestigious "Golden Ace" moniker to an updated boron model) that also exhibit a 9-10 ply construction detail in the throat area, so this difference may be the product of an effort to reduce manufacturing costs over time, rather than a reflection of divergent design specifications.

Either way, I am now 99.99% certain (with a margin of error of 0.01%) that Kunnan Industries made at least some of the racquets for Cloud. It would also not surprise me if the equally obscure (for the US) Weiss Cannon label, a Cloud spinoff, also had their products made by Kunnan before they quit the racquet business, like so many others of that era.

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Cloud was indeed German and was made famous when they introduced the Cloud King around 1982. It was a Prince Pro look a like made from Alcoa 7005 alloy which was marketed to withstand 40kg stringjobs. Later they introduced other models like the Magnesium Middy and Top (OS), Middy as in the pic above, graphites such as the Black Shadow, White Ghost and Red Devil (?).
Weiss Cannon was connected to Aldila up to a certain point. They produced some rackets but are now solely producing strings.